


love and some verses

by sylwrites



Series: break free and run [8]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Christmas Feels, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, the author makes no apologies for the cavities readers may encounter post-reading
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-04 01:38:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12760482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylwrites/pseuds/sylwrites
Summary: He’s still got more work to put in, but today, for the first time in weeks, he has longstanding and elaborate plans to let Saturday play out the way that God intended: sleep, sweatpants, and video games.Apparently, God has nothing on Betty Cooper, because Betty - his beautiful, kind, sweet, good-hearted Betty - isruining everything.College AU.





	love and some verses

**Author's Note:**

> we back!

_Love and some verses you hear_   
_say what you can't say_   
_love to say this in your ear,  
"I'll love you that way"_

  * Iron and Wine



  


It’s 9:30 in the morning on the first Saturday in December, and _finally,_ Jughead gets to sleep in.

 

It’s much needed after a truly heinous week of semester-end papers and a brutal regimen of studying for finals. He’s spent nearly every evening that he’s not at work studying at the library or holed up in his apartment, and it’s beginning to get a little old. Hell, he’s barely even seen Betty apart from a couple dinner dates, since she’s also been busy with school, which really fucking sucks. When this is over, he know he owes her a big date and probably some flowers, because even though she’s got her own workload, she’s still been dropping off food for him and his dad.

 

But not today. He’s still got more work to put in, but _today,_ for the first time in weeks, he has longstanding and elaborate plans to let Saturday play out the way that God intended: sleep, sweatpants, and video games.

 

Apparently, God has nothing on Betty Cooper, because Betty - his beautiful, kind, sweet, good-hearted Betty - is _ruining everything._

 

He’s exaggerating. A little, anyway. But her sudden appearance in the hallway outside his apartment - after incessantly buzzing for ten minutes straight - is definitely not part of his plan for today. Hell, he’s not even wearing clothes, having trudged to the foyer in his boxers and nothing else. His dad’s at work on a weekend shift, and _okay,_ maybe part of his Saturday plans had involved a distinct lack of pants.

 

Not that it particularly matters; Betty has, of course, seen him in all states of undress. It’s more the principle of the whole thing.

 

She has a sweet, wide smile on her face when he opens the door. Her blonde hair is out of its usual ponytail and is instead cascading over the ridges of the thick scarf that surrounds her neck. Her cheeks are flushed from the cold but her green eyes are bright and sparkling, and _christ,_ his girlfriend is so goddamn beautiful.

 

“Hey baby,” he says, leaning in to kiss her briefly. He’s so preoccupied by her sudden appearance here that it’s not until a couple of beats later that he realizes what’s in her hands.

 

Bags. Two in each to be exact, plus a large box wrapped haphazardly in a yoga mat carrier that’s slung across her back. And inside them, is-

 

“I brought decorations!” Betty exclaims, pushing past Jughead into his apartment. She drops her bags on the linoleum floor and starts to shed her winter layers. “I know you guys aren’t really big on Christmas, but a couple of small things will just make it a bit more festive around here, I think!”

 

She bites her lower lip, clearly a bit nervous despite her excitement. He knows what that’s about; Jughead had specifically told her that he and his dad weren’t decorating for Christmas (by choice; they’ll probably have some kind of meal, but the presence or lack of presence of a tree isn’t going to make or break either of their days), and yet here she is with bags full of glittery baubles.

 

Jughead sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “Betts, we talked about this.”

 

“I know, but…” she trails off, still nibbling her lip, and steps toward him. One hand slides up his bare chest, fingers curling around his shoulder, and she smiles hopefully. “I just think it would be nice.” Her eyes widen ever-so-slightly, the corners of her mouth softening, and she exhales audibly.

 

He stares at her for a moment, fully aware of exactly what she’s doing and annoyed at himself with how easily she’s going to succeed. “You’re evil,” he informs her, sliding an arm around her waist and kissing her softly. “You don’t get to look at me with those eyes-”

 

“I don’t get to use my eyes?” Betty giggles, brushing her lips against Jughead’s chin. “That’s gonna make it hard to walk home after-”

 

“You walked here like this?!” Jughead interrupts, moving his head back slightly so he can look at her face more clearly. “Betty. With a box on your back and four other bags?”

 

“Well, I don’t have a car,” Betty replies. “So yeah.” She tilts her head to the side. “Does pity help my decorating cause?”

 

Jughead drops his head to his shoulder and rotates it backward in a semi-circle to his other shoulder, then raises it and lets out a loud, exaggerated groan. “Fine,” he allows. “But I’m _not_ helping.”

 

“Don’t want Scrooges to help anyway,” she chirps playfully, pecking his lips again and then immediately turning around. She bends slightly to reach into one of her bags, and Jughead flattens his hand against his leg to keep himself from reaching for her. She’s wearing jeans whose fit is truly unfair, and a tight forest-green sweater that’s somehow both festive and alluring.

 

He still really doesn’t know how the hell he ended up with _Betty Cooper_ as his girlfriend, but he’s definitely not going to ask any questions.

 

His willpower dies five minutes later, when he walks up to Betty in the living room to tell her he’s going to hop in the shower. She’s tugging a small artificial tree out of the box she’d carried on her back, and when she sees him approach she smiles happily and begins explaining.

 

“My parents gave me this for my dorm,” she says. “But Veronica being … well, Veronica - she has a full-sized one for our common area. So I figured I would bring this one for you guys! It can sit on this side table, see?” she adds, gesturing to an unused wooden table that Jughead’s pretty sure was left at the apartment before he and his dad moved in.

 

“Whatever you want, Betts,” Jughead tells her, reaching for her waist and pulling her toward him for a kiss. He intends for it to be a chaste peck, but he’s still in a sort of hazy morning headspace and she’s here and she’s wearing those _fucking jeans,_ and anyway, what kind of boyfriend would he be if he didn’t make her fully aware of his appreciation for them? In doing so, he slips his tongue into her mouth and his hands into her back pockets, only breaking the kiss when she pulls back to giggle at his touch.

 

She has that look on her face, the one he’s sure only he gets to see, where she’s pretending to scold him but really loves it, so Jughead squeezes her ass again and mouths at her collarbone.

 

“I’m going to shower,” he mumbles against her skin, noting how quickly Betty’s hands slide against his back and taking that as encouragement to palm one of her breasts over her sweater.

 

“Okay,” Betty breathes, her fingers threading through his hair.

 

Jughead’s other arm winds around her waist and holds her tightly against him. “There’s room for two,” he suggests, noticing the way her shirt is riding up and intentionally doing nothing to stop it.

 

She giggles and pushes against him gently. “Not that I wouldn’t _love_ the distraction - but we both know there’s really _not_ room. Don’t you remember two weeks ago?”

 

He did; they’d both fit in the shower stall fine to begin with, but he’d gotten a little over-eager in his excitement and the entire situation had ended with a nearly-sprained ankle on his part and what would’ve been quite a bad near-miss involving Betty, the wall, and a built-in soap shelf.

 

“I remember being naked and you being naked,” Jughead grins, obediently dropping his hands from her and taking a step back. “But yeah okay, point taken.”

 

“Maybe later,” Betty promises, smiling slyly. “Now take those skinny legs and go shower.”

 

He laughs and starts walking down the hallway. “I know you’re really into my knobby knees, babe,” he calls back. “You can’t convince me otherwise.”

  


The tree is up when he gets out of the shower, although it’s still bare of ornaments and lights. Betty is in the middle of hanging garland along the bookshelves that line one wall of the small living room, quietly singing along with the Christmas album that she’s started to play on her phone. She looks up when he walks in and smiles as he grabs his laptop and plops down on the couch.

 

“Still a Scrooge?” she asks, a hint of challenge sparkling in her eyes.

 

Jughead grins at her. “Yup.”

 

“Okay,” Betty replies in a sing-song tone, turning her back again and continuing to thread the garland around the room.

 

He focuses on ignoring her afterward and actually manages to tune her out for a bit, narrowing his attention solely on the video game he’s attempting to conquer on his laptop. But just before completing his mission, his eyes happen to lift slightly and he catches a glimpse of Betty.

 

She’s hanging the lights on the tree, which in and of itself is a simple enough task, but since it’s Betty, she’s concentrating on getting an even distribution as though her life depends on it. The tip of her tongue is peeking out of the corner of her lips, her brow furrowed, and her eyes intense. She finally seems to achieve the optimal arrangement of lights, and when she plugs them in to survey her handwork, the look of happiness on her face makes Jughead’s heart hurt a little in the best way.

 

On-screen, his lack of attention causes his character to die. He closes the game, slides his laptop to the side, and stands up.

 

“Okay,” he announces, “I’ll help.”

 

Betty pauses for a moment and then turns to him with glee, arms already full with a box of Christmas balls in alternating shades of red, green, and silver. “Make sure it’s even!” she instructs. “Don’t forget to put them on the back of the tree, or it’ll topple over to one side.”

 

Jughead takes the box that she hands him. “Yes dear,” he says dryly, stepping awkwardly beside the sofa so that he can access the all-too-important back side. “So, you can take the Cooper out of Riverdale, but you can’t take Christmas out of the Cooper, huh?”

 

“That doesn’t even make sense, Jug,” she remarks, her eyes flitting over a box of star-shaped ornaments. “If the insinuation is that I like the holiday season, then yes, I do. You should know that by now.”

 

Jughead reaches for a faraway branch and slips a green ornament onto it, curving the tip up carefully so that it doesn’t slide off. “Yeah, I mean, I know your house was always like Santa’s Workshop around the holidays, but I wasn’t sure how much of that was Alice and how much of that was Betty.”

 

Betty shrugs. “It might be one of those social expectations things that Mom has infected me with, but this one isn’t detrimental to my mental health yet, so I’ll pick my battles on that kind of self-reflection.”

 

“Fair enough.” He moves around to the front of the tree, realizes that he has significantly less than half of his box left, and winces at the look on Betty’s face. “Too many on the back?” he guesses, and at her nod, he steps around to the back again, sighing.

 

* * *

 

All in all, it takes another hour to finish decorating the tree and the apartment to a level that meets Betty’s approval. At this point, Jughead anticipates stealing Betty away to his bedroom for a little festive greeting of his own, but just as he’s winding his arms around her waist she makes another small request.

 

Fifteen minutes after _that,_ they’re at the grocery store.

 

Jughead hates the grocery store. It’s filled with moms and screaming kids and all kinds of people he can’t relate to, and all of their problems - ‘this apple is bruised, what kind of a business are you running here?’ - are offensively mundane. On the upside, he and Betty are at least in the baking aisle, which he’s tolerating only because he knows it’ll lead to some of Betty’s famous Christmas cookies.

 

He gets to push the cart, which seems fun in a ten-year-old sort of way to begin with but ends up being way more trouble than it’s worth. Apparently, he’s not very good at following Betty properly, but if anyone would bother to ask him, he’d be sure to inform them that it’s Betty who doesn’t know how to walk like an organized human being in the store. She flits from aisle to aisle and then from side to side within an aisle, with total disregard for his need to steer the large cart around the other people occupying her desired space.

 

Right now, she’s engaged in a serious debate with herself over the effect of using cake flour versus all-purpose. It’d be cute, but it’s been going on for ten minutes already, and he’s fairly certain that he’s never complained about or noticed the kind of flour in what is already a perfect experience: eating a cookie.

 

“Betty,” Jughead says finally, seemingly interrupting her running monologue to herself. “If you don’t get all-purpose flour, I’ll die. I _demand_ that you get all-purpose.”

 

She looks surprised. “Wow. I didn’t think you’d have an opinion. But okay, decided.” She sets the heavy bag in their cart and moves up a couple of feet. “What about the brand of powdered sugar, do you-”

 

“This one,” he interrupts, picking up a bag and setting it beside the flour. “This brand is my favourite.”

 

Betty looks at him suspiciously but says nothing, choosing instead to take another step forward.

 

 _One step at a time,_ Jughead tells himself. _You can get through this._

 

He draws the line at the difference between regular and free-run eggs, commenting that _oh my god baby, it doesn’t matter,_ and it results in Betty taking them through the checkout line in a huff. He makes his apologies in the parking lot and they end up kissing against the side of his truck for five minutes before a middle-aged woman with a young child makes a huffing noise at them. Betty looks mortified, and in a moment of offense taken on her behalf, Jughead scowls at the woman and makes sure to kiss her one more time before opening the passenger door for her.

 

They make it home without incident, then Jughead proceeds immediately to wash his hands, ready for Betty’s dough-making instructions. He wonders if it’s cool to add chocolate chips to the granulated sugar cookie dough, and imagines the tastes combining in his mouth. It _seems_ yummy.

 

Apparently, his ideas are not welcomed.

 

“It’s an entirely different texture, Jughead,” Betty tells him. “How am I supposed to ice a snowman that has a random black toe?”

 

“Maybe he stubbed it,” Jughead suggests, a joke which also doesn’t seem to go over nearly as well aloud as it does in his head.

 

By the time the dough is made, rolled, and the cookies cut onto the baking sheet, Jughead is getting tired. He’s supposed to have played at least three new levels in his game by now, and has resigned himself to the fact that his plans have been totally derailed.

 

But then, once Betty closes the oven door, she grabs his hand and tugs him toward his bedroom.

 

And _that’s_ worth it.

 

He gets her off twice before the cookies are done, a new personal best, including one that immediately precedes his own release. She leaves after a few too-short minutes of post-coital cuddling, telling him that she’s going to a pre-scheduled yoga class with Veronica and will be back to ice the cookies once they’re cooled.

 

“I love you,” she tells him, kissing him softly at the doorway. “Thanks for all your help.”

 

“Anything for you, Betts,” Jughead says easily and honestly. “Love you too. Sure you don’t want me to drive you to yoga?”

 

“Nah, V is picking me up.” Betty pecks his cheek and disappears into the waiting elevator. Jughead waits until the door closes, then goes back into his apartment and collapses onto the couch face-first, exhausted.

 

He’s not sure how long he’s asleep, but when he wakes up his dad is walking in from work. FP drops his jacket on a hook, grabs a diet root beer - his newest post-alcohol favourite drink, which Jughead is learning to keep stocked in the fridge - and sits down on the chair across from Jughead.

 

“Betty was here,” he states matter-of-factly, observing Jughead’s prone position on the sofa.

 

Jughead yawns. “Yep.”

 

FP looks around the room, nodding slowly. “You should marry that girl,” he advises.

 

Jughead turns his head and his eyes fall on the sparkling tree, a glistening, happy reminder of the new future that they all have. Things were so different only a couple of short years ago; he would have never imagined that he’d have his father back in his life this way, or that the girl of his dreams would actually be looking back at him.

 

Quietly, he swallows and nods in agreement. “Yep.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm hungry. Feed me with reviews.


End file.
